Uh-Oh, SpaghettiOs (Obvious Pun)

I've covered a few instances of messages and advertisements from companies that were not thought out so well, but this has to be the most stunning. Recently, on December 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor was celebrated. As anyone with a basic knowledge of American history knows, the Pearl Harbor attack was a surprise attack on an American naval base by the Japanese, after which the United States declared war and entered officially into the Second World War.

Knowing that, it's hard to imagine why SpaghettiOs thought this was a good idea. The company tweeted an image of its cartoon logo holding the American flag. Their intentions might have been perfectly good, but the juxtaposition of a cartoon logo as goofy as theirs with an attack that killed literally thousands is obviously poor planning. Predictably, the response was a combination of outrage and amusement at the poor judgment of the brand.

SpaghettiOs deleted the tweet and apologized for it, which was probably the best thing they could do at this point. However, this effort was potentially undermined by a former director of digital marketing and social media, who appeared to lay the blame at the feet of those who attacked SpaghettiOs' tweet. Overall, the biggest question here is how anyone could have thought the original tweet was in any way a good idea.

Week 15

This week mostly consisted of receiving assignments or knowing that I had assignments due within the next few weeks, and yet choosing not to work on them for no justifiable reason. I have a portfolio of work due for Intro to Creative Writing. I have a paper due for English Studies. I have another paper due for Philosophy and Film. I have done pretty much nothing for all of these assignments.

On the positive side, I don't know that I have any actual finals. It seems that my classes have generally just assigned papers instead, which could mean exam week will be pretty relaxed. In the time leading up to exam week, on the other hand, I need to actually start working or I'll be in some serious trouble.

Instead of actually doing work this week, I ended up distracting myself with YouTube videos, talking to other people, and writing. I did actually get some writing done on projects I've been working on for a while, so that does count for something. Still, I probably need to actually get to work soon, or face serious consequences.

Measure What Matters: Chapter 13

Chapter 13 focuses on the importance of measuring in not-for-profit organizations. Although, unlike for-profit companies, not-for-profit organizations do not have customers, measurement is still important for them. They have to maintain a good relationship with their contributors, volunteers, and the like. According to the book, at times they need to behave more like for-profit companies in their use of measurement, for the sake of their own success.

The chapter lists six steps: defining objectives, identifying and prioritizing audiences, establishing a benchmark, choosing metrics, choosing a measurement tool, and of course analyzing the results and making changes accordingly. Objectives stem from the mission of the organization, but it's important to keep in mind every aspect of the mission when determining the objectives. For instance, as Habitat for Humanity uses volunteers to build its houses, it needs to keep in mind the importance of volunteers--rather than just money--in determining its objectives. It's also important to keep in mind that, unlike with for-profit corporations, cooperation between not-for-profit entities is quite common.

This chapter appealed to me more than a lot of others in the books just because it addressed a group of entities toward which I'm more sympathetic. While there are few (if any) for-profit corporations for which I have much admiration, there are definitely a number of not-for-profit organizations that appeal to me. I thought the book's insights were interesting as well. While the idea of not-for-profit organizations taking a page from the book of for-profit companies is not an appealing idea to me, it does seem appropriate here. It does make sense to me, as well, that not-for-profit organizations would benefit from cooperation much more than for-profit companies would, which is part of my preference for them.

Measure What Matters Chapter 12

Chapter 12 focuses mostly on measuring relationships with salespeople. Obviously, it's important to find out just how well they're selling your product, as well as their overall satisfaction. For many large companies, this can be difficult. Often, money is thrown at the issue without any knowledge of just how useful the data being collected is.

It can also be a problem if there isn't both a clear message and a clear objective in all communications. This is particularly a problem with franchisees, since they may cater to a different audience than the company as a whole. The solution the book proposes is to focus on the commonalities in the message. Also, it's important to have a measurement program in order to find out what is being said and what image is being created.

This chapter was interesting because of its focus on communications within a company rather than with those outside of it. It's easy to forget that companies rely on many others for their success, and they may often have their differences with those people. The book definitely provides some useful advice in how to overcome those differences and be successful as a company.

Love-Bombing North Korea

A Swedish underwear company, Björn Borg,  held a poll for what country was "in most need of love and seduction." North Korea won. The problems here should be apparent already, but it only gets worse. Apparently, the company thought it was a good idea to have a journalist drop the underwear from her balcony, calling them "weapons of mass seduction." The fact that few people would actually find this joke funny in a highly repressive dictatorship that is actually devoted to developing nuclear weapons apparently escaped the people making this decision. 

This was a pretty serious PR mistake to begin with, but the company has done absolutely nothing to rectify it. Instead, their marketing director released a statement in which she said she was "proud" of the effort. Unsurprisingly, the move has garnered criticism from human rights groups, in light of both its insensitivity and the fact that it mostly just created an embarrassing situation.

If the company thought this would be a good way to promote their brand, their judgment is stunningly poor. They also seem to have yet to realize that they now have a PR crisis on their hands that should probably be dealt with by issuing an apology rather than doubling down on what was an imprudent idea to begin with. Whether they will actually realize their mistake has yet to be seen. 

Week 13

This week was mostly a lesson in the dangers of procrastination. I had an essay due for English Proseminar, a paper due for Philosophy and Film, and a story due for Intro to Creative Writing. I knew about all these things by Monday or Tuesday, and I decided I should probably do some work on them, but I didn't. By Thursday I still hadn't started any of them.

By Thursday afternoon, it was pretty clear that I needed to get started if I wanted to have any chance of finishing what I had to do. I started off with the paper for English Proseminar, which was only supposed to be about two pages and which I finished pretty quickly. Next was the paper for Philosophy and Film, and that's where things started to get difficult. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, but it quickly proved difficult for me to meet the wordcount I was supposed to, and I found out I'd written maybe the first half of it wrong. So that took me several hours to do.

When I finally finished that paper, I moved on to the short story. I'd only figured out what the story was going to be about earlier that day, and I was mostly kind of making it up as I went along. Since it was the middle of the night by that point, I decided to go to bed and wake up early the next morning to finish it. So I was going on about five hours of sleep on Friday, but I only had one class so that worked out okay.

Measure What Matters: Chapter 9

Chapter 9 of "Measure What Matters" focuses a lot on maintaining a good relationship with communities. By communities, the book really just means the group of people with whom a company will interact. It uses two opposing examples when talking about this: first, the previously discussed Amazon example where the company had to remove books from its users' Kindles due to copyright issues; second, an example where PETA attempted to start a "free the whales" campaign against SeaWorld.

As previously noted, Amazon got a pretty poor response from their actions. Their customers saw them as acting unilaterally, without telling them properly about the problem, and they were understandably angered. Amazon damaged its relationship with its community by acting without letting them in on what was going on, and they had to apologize for it ultimately.

On the other hand, SeaWorld maintained such a good relationship with its community that PETA's campaign fell flat on its face. SeaWorld's visitors and community were willing to defend it against the charges of the animal rights group, and ultimately the "free the whales" campaign went essentially nowhere. SeaWorld had maintained a good enough relationship with its community that it avoided a crisis.

Ultimately, I think these examples illustrate the point pretty well. In business, as in many other things, it's good to have as many friends as possible. If this policy can help ensure that companies actually treat their customers well instead of as sources of profit, that's all the better. Unfortunately, it seems as if in many instances there's sort of a general agreement among companies not to treat customers too well, but only well enough that they'll come back. I think if a new company came along to challenge the current ones by actually treating its customers with full respect, then, as the book has laid out, it would probably enjoy a great deal of success.